I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Hydro Resources, Inc. can’t yet start mining for uranium in Church Rock, New Mexico, despite a ruling last week by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld its mining license. That’s because another court case before the Court could require HRI to seek a permit through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The issue is whether or not 160 acres owned by HRI is part of “Indian country,” a decision which governs whether its underground injection permit is subject to regulation by the EPA or the New Mexico Environment Department.
The land is in the “checkerboard” area of northwest New Mexico, which refers to small private land holdings, interspersed through Indian land, that date back to railroad land grants made by the federal government in the early 20th century.
HRI says it owns both the land and the mineral rights outright, making the 160 acres private property and not part of Indian country. The EPA says the land is part of a dependent Indian community and therefore subject to its regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act rather than regulations of the NMED.
The Court of Appeals agreed with the EPA last year, but the company then asked for a further review by the entire panel of Tenth Circuit judges. That request was granted, oral arguments were heard in January and the company now awaits the final decision of the Tenth Circuit.
What makes “Indian country?”
The original 10th Circuit decision describes in detail why the land—which no one lives on—can be considered Indian country.
Under U.S. statute, in order to be considered “Indian country,” land has to be included in an Indian reservation, a dependent Indian community or an allotment. In this case, the land is considered part of a dependent Indian community because it is wholly enclosed by the Church Rock Chapter of the Navajo Nation. (A chapter is a local government similar to a county or municipality.)
Of the 57,000 acres within the Chapter boundary, according to the court decision narrative, 78 percent is held in trust for Navajos by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Another 10 percent is held by the Bureau of Land Management and used almost exclusively by Navajos. The Navajo Nation owns another 2 percent. About 6 percent is privately owned.
The 160 acres owned by HRI are within the boundaries of the Chapter. The town of Church Rock is about six miles south of the HRI land. Over 97 percent of the 2,800 inhabitants of the Chapter are Navajo. Most non-Indians living in the Chapter are married to Navajos. A majority of the inhabitants speak Navajo. The primary livelihood is the raising of livestock, the decision narrative states, with income supplemented by “traditional self-employment: jewelry making, silversmithing, sewing, stone carving, wood carving, and weaving.”
The dispute over permitting jurisdiction has lasted for twenty years. HRI bought the property in 1970. It received its underground injection permit—which is necessary for the particular kind of mining it wants to do—from the New Mexico Environment Department in 1989. The Navajo Nation disputed the jurisdiction of the NMED in 1996, sending a letter to the EPA that the land was part of Indian Country and therefore subject to federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA agreed with the Navajo Nation in 2007 that because the land fell within the Church Rock Chapter it was part of Indian country.
Company says its private property should be considered on its own
Because no humans live on the 160 acres and it’s owned completely by HRI, it should be considered as separate from the surrounding community, Richard A. Van Horn, Senior Vice President for HRI’s parent company, Uranium Resources, told The Independent in an interview this week.
For it to now fall under the jurisdiction of the EPA would mean the company has to seek another permit, Van Horn said, when they believe they have correctly acquired all of the necessary permits and are ready to begin.
“It would mirror what we’ve already done with the state,” Van Horn said. “This is an issue about whether or not … we own the land, own the mineral rights or not.”
Van Horn said the company filed for permits with the bodies it believed to be appropriate—the state of New Mexico for the underground injection permit, the Environmental Protection Agency for an aquifer exemption, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a mining permit. The company has received all of those permits.
“It’s been 23 years that we’ve been fighting this,” he said. “It started out not that we didn’t want to be Indian country, we [just] want to mine our property. We think we filed properly with the state.”
Van Horn said the company doesn’t object to being regulated by the EPA in principle, but would rather not have its land “painted with a wide brush” as Indian country. HRI would prefer to have it considered “truly private land,” he said.
HRI owns land and/or mineral rights throughout the checkerboard area of the Grants mineral belt in northwest New Mexico. It estimates its holdings include 101 million pounds of uranium, which it intends to mine using both conventional mining methods and a process called insitu leaching. It’s holdings are about one third of the known uranium reserves in the mineral belt.
Uranium is a radioactive mineral processed for nuclear energy fuel. The Navajo Nation is opposed to uranium mining, issuing a ban in 2005, due to pollution and harm to the health of Navajos from mining that took place in the latter half of the 20th century. Mines from that era with exposed radioactive material still litter the landscape, and many are opposed to any resumption in mining until those sites are cleaned up.
